Funded by a Labour donor, opened by Tony Blair, built by modernist Norman Foster, ­Bexley Business Academy was one of the most high-profile symbols of New Labour’s education policy. And how they were happy to boast about it.

At the opening ceremony in 2003, Blair spoke of Bexley as ‘the future’ of state ­education, and Norman Foster’s website extolled a ­‘visionary, light-filled school that would be ­democratic and flexible’.

Seven years on, the reality could not be more different. Bexley has been a vastly expensive nightmare as a building project, and as a school with a sprawling roster of 1,500 pupils has spent most of its short life in the academic ­emergency ward.

Grand plans: Tony Blair opened the Bexley Business Academy in 2003 when it was heralded as one of the symbols of New Labour's education policy

The litany of vastly costly problems is extensive: the roof leaks, the wireless IT systems didn’t work, the electric gates got stuck, the changing rooms were far too small, the designer toilets broke time and again, as did the heating system.

To cap it all, there is a nagging smell of sewage pervading the school, though that might just as easily be the stench of New Labour’s hubris given the way it trumpeted this project.

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The school cost an astonishing £31 million to build — far more than any normal school of a similar size — as part of the £55 billion Building Schools for the Future programme that Michael Gove, the new Tory schools secretary, has closed down.

So money that could have been spent on a decent education for its pupils was wasted on a vanity building project, but even worse, a combination of what appear to be design defects and building failures have created a maintenance disaster zone that continue to drain away the school’s funds.

When it was designed, Foster boasted that the building had been carefully planned to keep heating costs low, and a self-congratulatory ‘assessment’ from the government’s architectural adviser concluded that ‘maintenance of the building’s different materials has been carefully ­considered in the design, and as such is mainly low level’.

In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

‘It’s a hugely expensive building and costs us an absolute fortune,’ says Sam Elms, the school’s chief executive. ‘It’s a nightmare to run. If we could move to another building, we would.’

The finance director, meanwhile, has said: ‘We spend 9 per cent of our annual Government grant on premises. Given that our average spend on staff costs is more than 80 per cent, this clearly represents a high proportion of the remaining grant income and leaves little for other equally vital expenditure.’

In fact, as of last year, the academy employs a total of 234 staff, including 105 teachers, 74 classroom assistants and 36 management and administrative staff.

Leaked internal documents predict that the school faces a deficit of £859,000 by next year unless drastic cost-cutting takes place. So far, with seven people on its payroll earning more than £60,000 a year, this doesn’t seem to have taken place.

On the contrary, in addition to ­having a chief executive — paid more than £120,000 a year — it also has a so-called ‘executive principal’, ­Christina Moon.

Mrs Moon’s main home is in ­Bristol, so in addition to her £120,000-a-year pay, she has also had a £20,000-a-year flat rented for her in Greenwich by the school. That’s on top of yet more ‘principals’, ‘vice-principals’ and ‘assistant principals’.

Bexley has been a vastly expensive nightmare as a building project, and as a school with a sprawling roster of 1,500 pupils has spent most of its short life in the academic ­emergency ward

The school cost an astonishing £31 million to build — far more than any normal school of a similar size — as part of the £55 billion Building Schools for the Future programme that Michael Gove, the new Tory schools secretary, has closed down

No wonder an education consultancy report, seen by the Times Education Supplement, said that the school suffered from ‘a lack of clarity about decision-making’, as well as ‘duplication and inefficiencies’.

So the building was an expensive disaster, and despite the high-profile involvement of Labour donor Sir David Garrard, in the end his charitable trust contributed less than 8 per cent of the cost of the school. The rest was met by the taxpayer.

And Sir David’s name proved to be a mixed blessing when he became involved in the Cash for Honours affair, with his peerage blocked after it emerged that he had lent several million pounds to the Labour Party in a way that allowed his name to be concealed.

Nor has (Lord) Norman Foster’s involvement done Bexley much good either. Despite being ennobled by Labour and appointed to the even more prestigious Order of Merit, Foster has quit his post in the House of Lords to maintain his non-domicile status as a resident of ­Switzerland.

It seems that while he may be prepared to spend other people’s money on so-called democratic schools, but he’d rather not contribute his own money towards funding them.

In Switzerland, Lord Foster lives with his third wife, Elena Ochoa, now Lady Foster of Thames Bank. In her native Spain, Lady Foster was best known as the presenter of Hablemos de Sexo — Let’s Talk About Sex — in which the doctora del sexo enlightened her compatriots on behaviour in the bedroom.

The academic results at Bexley, the school Lord Foster designed, have been mixed. Last year, only 40 per cent of the pupils passed five or more GCSEs of grade C or above (including Maths and English), which was ­better than the dismal 19 per cent two years ago, but still a poor performance for a so-called ­flagship academy.

Norman Foster and Tony Blair appear to have believed that smart school buildings would translate into good exam results.

But in fact, as Professor Dylan Wiliam, former deputy director of the Institute of Education, says: ‘I know of no studies that show changing the environment has a direct impact on student achievement.’

In fact, an Ofsted inspection in 2005 found the Academy to be ‘inadequate’, and it was issued with a Notice to Improve, essentially a final demand from the Government that a school must get better quickly, or face being taken over by the Department of Education.

Since then, academic matters have improved, but not by much. The most recent Ofsted report, published this year, found that ‘the Academy is emerging from troubled times.

‘Since the last inspection, two principals have resigned from their post and the academy has had a period where there was no substantive head teacher of the primary phase’.

The current staff are clearly trying hard, but the shortcomings of the building they’ve been left with are obviously making life difficult for them.

Not much of a monument then, to a former prime minister who promised to make Education, Education, Education his top three priorities.

If you want to understand how it was possible for New Labour to double the schools budget in real terms without achieving an improvement in standards, look no further than Bexley.

It’s a monument to vanity policy making, and those councils currently wasting council taxpayers’ money suing Michael Gove for refusing to allow them to build their own educational white elephants should study Bexley — and think again.

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Scandal of Blair's £31 million flagship school: A leaking roof, broken designer toilets and a useless computer system